Merriam-Webster Expertly Sums Up 2017 With Its Word Of The Year

The term enjoyed multiple lookup spikes on the dictionary’s website in 2017 and an overall 70 percent rise in its searches compared with 2016.

The Women’s March on Washington and other cities around the world the day after President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January and the ongoing #MeToo movement against sexual harassment, bookended the 12 months.

2017 saw both a sustained rise in 'feminism' lookups and a number of event-driven spikes.

“The word feminism was being used in a kind of general way,” the dictionary’s editor-at-large, Peter Sokolowski, told The Associated Press. “What does it mean to be a feminist in 2017? Those kinds of questions are the kinds of things, I think, that send people to the dictionary.”